Martinsburg Gazette And Public Advertiser

It is worthy of remark, that by the success which has attended the efforts of Major Denham, and his enterprising fellow travellers, to penetrate the interior of Africa, they have only ascertained the truth of the theory advanced and so ingeniously supported by the enlightened Spaniard who travelled in Africa and Arabia some years ago, under the auspices of Napoleon, and under the feigned name of Ali Bey, in the character of a Turk; that there must exist an immense Lake or Sea, in the central regions of Africa. The English travellers, above mentioned, reached and examined an interior Lake, 2000 miles long and 150 broad, called Lake Tchad. If Major Denham's account be correct, this is one of the most remarkable lakes in the world. It is thus described—Nat Intel.

"It is situate in 16 deg. E. longitude. and 13 1/2 of N. latitude; is about two thousand miles long from E. to W. by one hundred and fifty broad, and occupies nearly the precise position of Wangara, as laid down in Arrowsmith's Map in which swamp the Joliba or Niger is supposed to terminate. It covers about as large as the two American Lakes Erie and Ontario, both together. The Tchad receives a river called the Yeou, about fifty yards broad in the dry season, which has its source about four hundred miles distant in the S. W. and which was well ascertained not to be the Niger. Another river, six times as large, with a delta of fifty miles broad at its embouchure, flows into the Lake from the S. and is called the Shary, which may be, but most probably is not, the river alluded to. What is rather a puzzling circumstance in fact physical geography, this Lake, though it has no efflux, is fresh and yet saline incrustations are found in some parts of the country around, and small salt pools are found close to its North ern margin. The Lake Tchad has a number of Islands on its Eastern side. which are inhabited by the Biddo mahs, a race of piratical savages, who came in a fleet of a hundred boats, and rob or carry into slavery the People living near its banks. The Lake swells greatly when the periodical rains fall, and vast numbers of lions, elephants, and hyenas, driven from their retreats on its bank, by the waters, destroy the small crop of the villagers, and carry off the cattle or the women who are sent to watch the fields. Sometimes these animals attack the villages."